


Harry Potter and the Lazarus Pit

by kayeslin



Category: Batman (Comics), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Discussion of Torture, Family Bonding, Gen, Sirius Black Lives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-11-28 21:29:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 13,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11426553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayeslin/pseuds/kayeslin
Summary: In Harry Potter's third year at Hogwarts, he hears about the death of his estranged cousin Stephanie, kickstarting the un-estrangement of her mother.A year later, he finds that the mysterious Stephanie Brown is at the center of Voldemort's return to life and the sudden appearance of league of muggle killers known only as the League of Assassins.





	1. Prologue

 

There was a time when Harry believed everything his aunt and uncle told him. He always hated them, of course, and hated what they told him and how they treated him. But he believed them when they said he was a freak. He believed them when they said his parents were losers. And he believed them when they said he deserved the way they treated him.  
  
When Hagrid stormed in and told him he was a wizard, that his parents had loved him, that in fact the whole wizarding world loved him - it did more than just make him feel like finally he had a future. Suddenly everything Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had ever told him was suspect. If other orphans weren’t hidden away in cupboards, then would Harry have been better off running away to an orphanage? Did their neighbor down the street really steal their newspapers? What else had he been lied to about?  
  
That first summer, after Hagrid and Harry went shopping but before he was supposed to catch the train, Harry spent a lot of time thinking about an aunt he had never met in person. Hagrid had been a welcome twist, but before he swept in to take Harry away the fantasy had always been some distant relative of his father’s. And it was always a relative of his father he dreamed of despite the fact that he knew his mother had a sister besides Petunia Dursley. He never thought of her, because according to the Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon Harry’s Aunt Crystal was a morally depraved loon. They said her husband was a criminal who was in and out of jail and that their daughter was a particularly stupid deviant. Besides the orphanage, which was promised to be full of beatings, sending Harry away to live with Aunt Crystal had been a common threat.  
  
_Behave, boy,_ they’d say, _otherwise we’ll ship you off to America to live with Crazy Crystal._

(It would take Harry years to realize it, but this was far more than a threat; it was a way to control Harry by making him dependent on the Dursleys. They wanted to make him feel grateful to them no matter how poorly he was treated. As long as he thought it was worse somewhere else they could treat him however they wanted and he wouldn’t fight back.)  
  
When Harry started to question his reality, Crystal Brown was a big question mark. Petunia used some of the same language to describe her as she did to describe Lily Potter. Was Crystal Brown a witch? Even after going to Hogwarts he wondered about the Browns. Hogwarts may have been home, but in another life maybe he would have gone to Ilvermony. He might have had family at school with him like Ron did, because maybe his cousin Stephanie was a witch like her mother (maybe) was.  
  
As time went on Harry let go of those day dreams. He was too scared to ever ask Aunt Petunia directly, but he thought it unlikely she wouldn’t mention it on her own during one of her angry tirades. The rant she went on back on the hut in the sea had certainly made it seem like Lily had been the only witch in the family.  
  
The possibility of Aunt Crystal being less awful than Aunt Petunia made her out to be had dwindled by the time Christmas during his third year came around. Finding out he did in fact have some long lost relative from his father’s side (or at least a godfather who was his father’s best friend) who was also a murderer who wanted him dead made it hard to think of any fanciful what-ifs. His new Firebolt was an even better distraction. In fact he didn’t think of the mysterious Browns again until after Professor McGonagall had taken away his new broom and the new term had started. Harry had been digging through his trunk for a book while Ron recounted Hermione’s betrayal to their returned roommates when he saw a letter from the Dursleys.  
  
He’d been so excited about the broom-shaped gift he had forgotten the letter had come with the rest of his gifts. He crawled onto his bed even as he thought about shucking it right back to the bottom of his trunk, sure that whatever they felt compelled to say to him would only make him feel worse, but figured nothing actually could so why not read it.  
  
The letter made Harry feel worse.  
  
His cousin Stephanie was dead. A girl he’d never seen in person. A girl he talked to on the phone once a year. A girl who he knew nothing about other than the awful things Aunt Petunia and Aunt Marge had said about her the summer before while gossiping over too much whiskey. A girl only a few years older than him. She was dead. And he was thinking about a broom.  
  
“My cousin is dead,” Harry had said quietly.  
  
Ron stopped talking right away.  
  
“What?” Neville asked. Harry had forgotten he was in the room.  
  
“My cousin is dead,” Harry said again, but no louder.  
  
The floorboards creaked as three sets of legs moved slowly toward his bed. Ron pulled his curtain aside to look in on him, the others crowded behind him.  
  
“Harry I’m so sorry,” Ron said slowly. “I know you and Dudley had your differences, but—”  
  
“Not Dudley,” Harry said. His eyes were still glued on the short letter Aunt Petunia had written him. “My cousin Stephanie. Her mum moved away before I was even born. They lived in America. I think I saw a picture of them once but I,” he paused. None of the other boys filled in the silence as he searched for words. “I don’t remember what they look like. What Stephanie looks like. Looked like.”  
  
“Oh Harry.” Neville reached around Ron to awkwardly pat Harry’s knee.  
  
“Do you—,” Ron started, then seemed to think better of it. He left whatever he was about to say unsaid and instead just climbed up on the bed next to Harry to throw his arm over his shoulder.  
  
“How did it happen?” Seamus whispered. The gentleness of his tone did nothing to stop Dean and Neville from shooting him dirty looks.  
  
“I don’t know,” Harry said. Ron did a poor job of hiding his eyes scanning the letter still in Harry’s hands, but Harry was being honest. He handed the letter to Ron and got up off the bed to get some water from the bathroom.  
  
“Well,” Seamus muttered from Harry’s bed, “what happened?”  
  
“It doesn’t even say,” Ron whispered back. “His aunt’s a real piece of work, but this is cruel.”  
  
“What does it say?” Dean asked.  
  
“That she died. That he should write his condolences to his other aunt, and it has her address. That’s really it.”  
  
“That’s awful,” Neville murmured.  
  
“My aunt hates her sister,” Harry said loudly. The other boys jumped and looked at him. “I mean she hated my mum too. She always told me she and my dad died in a car crash.” Seamus and Neville shared a rather horrified look, but Harry didn’t see it. “At least she didn’t lie about Stephanie. Or insult her in the letter. And she told me to write Aunt Crystal. I don’t think she cares about her feeings, it’s just the proper thing to do but,” he paused again, “but at least she cares more about propriety than whatever old grudge made her hate them.”  
  
“Harry, do you want to go for a walk?” Ron asked. When Harry didn’t say anything he continued. “We can sneak out, let you get some air.”  
  
“Even if you get caught I doubt McGonagall would mind,” Dean said. “You should take a walk, like Ron said.”  
  
“Or we could just go to the common room and sit by the fire,” Neville said. “You can stay nice and safe inside,” he shot a disapproving look at Dean and Ron, “but a fire would be nice wouldn’t it?”  
  
Harry started walking to the door, all three of his roommates on his heels.  
  
“I want to be alone,” he said before closing the door in their faces.  
  
Halfway down the stairs Harry still wasn’t sure if he was going to follow Ron and Dean’s advice or Neville’s. He hadn’t brought the map or his cloak with him, though, so he guessed sitting by the fire made the most sense.  
  
It turned out he wouldn’t be alone though, because Hermione was there studying. She looked up when he walked down with an expression like a kicked dog, but it was immediately replaced with one of worry when she saw his face.  
  
“Harry!” she whisper-shouted. “What’s wrong?”  
  
Harry suddenly realized he was crying. Crying for a girl he didn’t know. He only ever talked to her on Christmas, he was suddenly remembering. Aunt Petunia would dutifully call her sister on Christmas day to wish her happy holidays as though they didn’t hate each other and pass the phone to both Dudley and Harry to talk to their cousin. Dudley and she always talked about sports, Harry remembered. He didn’t know what Stephanie had said on her end, but Dudley always got fairly into it. Harry and Stephanie didn’t have a set conversation topic. Sometimes they talked about sports but Harry didn’t like anything but Quidditch and obviously he hadn’t like that before he found out about magic. It bothered him suddenly that he couldn’t remember the last thing they’d talked about. It would have been three years before; he spent Christmas’ at Hogwarts and was never near a phone to ring her. What had they talked about three years ago?  
  
“Harry,” Hermione said, much closer than before. She was holding out a handkerchief for him.  
  
He took it silently and mechanically whipped his eyes.  
  
“I’m sorry about the Firebolt, Harry,” Hermione said, “but you have to understand why I did it.”  
  
“My cousin’s dead,” Harry said back. Hermione looked like he’d slapped her. He felt bad for being so abrupt with her, but he didn’t know of any more tactful way to say _I don’t care about the broom anymore, Hermione. That was a problem for 10 minutes ago. Now someone around our age is dead. The world is different now. Broom’s aren’t as important as dead girls_.  
  
“I’m so sorry, Harry,” Hermione said.  
  
“Not Dudley.” Harry interrupted her before she could continue. “My mom had another sister who moved to America. I used to dream about running away to live with her instead of Aunt Petunia. I used to dream about having Stephanie as a cousin instead of Dudley. She was older but she was cool. At least, she seemed cool on the phone. She talked to Dudley about wrestling. I don’t like wrestling though. But I can’t—”  
  
Words were escaping Harry's mouth faster than he could think. Faster than he could keep up with through his running nose and leaking eyes. Hermione enveloped him in a hug. Another pair of arms came around him from the other side, and he felt a chin land on the top of his head. Even though he couldn’t see through the tears suddenly streaming down his face he knew Ron had come down to meet him in the common room.  
  
His two friends led him to a couch by the fire and sat with him as he mumbled through everything he could remember about Stephanie Brown. About how she did gymnastics as a kid. How she taught him a secret code that used the first letter of the first word of a new sentence to send a message. It wasn’t much, but talking about her felt good so he kept going through everything he’d imagined about her over the years, even talking about the nasty things Aunt Petunia used to say about her just to say out loud that he thought it was bullocks.  
  
In the morning things were almost back to normal. Harry felt a bit awkward and embarrassed for crying all over his friends, especially over a girl he didn’t know, but they both didn’t let him even start to voice an apology.  
  
He did write a letter to Aunt Crystal, and gave Hedwig very clear instructions to leave it in her house without being seen. And after that tried to distract himself without totally forgetting about his distant family. It seemed disrespectful now, to just put them out of his mind like he used to.  
  
Listening to Sirius talk about living together it was impossible not to think about Aunt Crystal and her dead daughter, but it’s not like Harry got much time to feel conflicted about finding a new family. He spent the whole train ride home thinking about how it felt his curse was to have home within his sights only to be snatched away from him. He got to go to Hogwarts, but only for part of the year. He got to dream about living with an Aunt who didn’t hate him, but that might only be a daydream. He got to meet a godfather who loved him, but he was framed for murder and on the run from the law.  
  
He was starting to feel himself fall down the now-familiar feeling of guilt that came whenever he started to feel bad about himself when Sirius had been so wronged and Stephanie was dead, when the slowing of the train pulled him out.  
  
“If you’re worried about going home,” Ron said, knowing how Harry usually felt about the end of the school year, “you can always tell your Aunt and Uncle about Sirius.”  
  
Hermione giggled and added, “His picture was in the news all last summer.”  
  
Harry laughed along and was about to say he would do just that when he caught sight of his Aunt and Uncle. Only it wasn’t Aunt Petunia.  
  
“I’ve got to go,” Harry said distractedly to Ron and Hermione. “Let me know how about the Cup, Ron. I’ll write you soon.” And then he walked away with only half a glance back to his friends waving him away confusedly.  
  
Harry had thought he didn’t even know what Aunt Crystal looked like, but the woman across the train station standing next Uncle Vernon reminded him of a picture form the book Hagrid had given him back in his first year. She’d been at his parent’s wedding, he realized. Crystal Brown was older than either of her sisters, with her light brown hair made lighter by grey hair liberally sprinkled throughout. She had wrinkles around her eyes, which as he got closer Harry could see were the same green as his own. As her sister Lily's.  
  
“Aunt Crystal,” Harry said as soon as he was close enough that he thought she could hear. There were still people crossing in the bath between them, but her eyes stopped scanning the crowd and landed on him. Her face lit up in a smile, while next to her Uncle Vernon’s face soured.  
  
“Good, you’re here,” Vernon said at the same time Crystal said, “Hello, Harry.”  
  
“You’re living with your Aunt from now own,” Vernon said, ignoring Crystal, who tried to speak over him.  
  
“Vernon he barely knows me. Let us say a proper hello at least.”  
  
“What?” Harry said smartly.  
  
“I’ve moved back to the country,” Crystal said before Vernon could say anything. “And Petunia and Vernon thought you could stay with me for a bit. Only if you want, of course. Or maybe only temporarily. Whatever you’re comfortable with, dear.”  
  
“He wants it,” Vernon said coldly. “And it’ll be permanently.” For once Harry agreed with his uncle.  
  
He might not have known his Aunt Crystal at all, but in 10 seconds she’d been nicer to him than the Dursleys were in 10 years.  
  
And he might not know why the move was happening, or how they had sorted any of it out, but Harry wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth.  
  
“Great,” he said, and then reached out his hand to his Aunt. “Glad to meet you, Aunt Crystal.” She smiled and shook it. “Let’s go home.”


	2. Move In Day

“Prick.”  
  
Harry’s head whipped around towards Aunt Crystal so fast he heard his neck crack. She didn’t seem to notice at all though as she got her bag settled on her lap and told the cabby driver her address. After she leaned back in her seat to look at Harry she must’ve realized how shocked he was.  
  
“Sorry,” she said, “forgive my language. Vernon and I have never got on but I guess I shouldn’t talk like that in front of you.”  
  
“Don’t worry about it,” Harry said faintly, and then decided to try his luck. “I’ve lived with him for 13 years so I definitely know what a prick he can be.”  
  
Rather than scold him about his language or disrespect, Aunt Crystal just laughed.  
  
“Well, it was his idea for you to stay with me for the summer. So he can’t be all bad”  
  
Harry thought that was unlikely. Not that it wasn’t Uncle Vernon’s idea; he was sure that as soon as Crystal told the Dursleys she was moving back they had started packing his things in their eagerness to get rid of him. But that he couldn’t be all bad.   
  
“Petunia has been mentioning how eager you were to get to know me,” Aunt Crystal continued, “but living so far off it was hard for me to ever think of a visit for either of us. I’m glad they were both so helpful setting this up for us.”  
  
Harry had never mentioned his desire to live with literally anyone but the Dursleys, let alone Crystal, to either his aunt or uncle. But it figured that Aunt Petunia had been trying to plant the seeds to make it seem like she wasn’t hoisting her problem nephew on other people. That in fact she was doing them a favor. Harry laughed a little.  
  
“Yeah,” he said, “they’re real kind that way.”   
  
Crystal gave Harry an indecipherable look and he wondered if he’d given too much away, but she smiled after a moment and he relaxed.  
  
“You and I will be unpacking at the same time, so dinner might not be much. Do you like Indian? I think I’m in a bit of a delivery hotspot for it.”  
  
Harry had never had Indian food in his life but he said sure anyway.  
  
“So you’ve not been in town long?” Harry asked.  
  
“No,” Crystal said a bit distractedly. She had pulled out her phone and was apparently pulling up menus for him to look at. Harry had been in the wizarding world so long he didn’t realize that was a thing phones could do nowadays.   
  
“Well technically I flew in two weeks ago, but I stayed with Petunia and Vernon at first. My lease didn’t start until a few days ago, and my stuff only started arriving in the mail yesterday,” she said. “Still waiting on a few boxes, mostly kitchen stuff but I’m sure they’ll be here soon. We can just try out a few of the restaurants in the neighborhood, yeah?”  
  
“Yeah.” Harry smiled, and didn’t mention that the Dursleys thought take-out was for the lazy.  
  
“Here you go, pick whatever you want,” she said, handing him her shiny phone. Harry took it gingerly, using his finger to scroll like he had seen her do. He had no idea what any of the dishes were but didn’t want to ask for help so he tried to distract her while he read each description.  
  
“How long were you in America for?” Harry asked.  
  
“Ooph,” Crystal sighed, “I guess around 20 years.”   
  
That sounded about right to Harry. Crystal Brown had a rather thick American accent, but she lost it on a few words here and there.  
  
“How old were you when you moved?”  
  
“19,” Crystal said. “I started university at Queen Mary, but I transferred after my first year to be—” she stopped herself, but continued on so quickly Harry almost didn’t noticed the skip. “So I moved to Gotham and have been living there ever since. Or at least until two weeks ago.”  
  
Harry was still struggling through the menu, so he was going to ask more about where exactly Gotham was, why she transferred, if she liked it and all that but the cab jerked to a stop. Crystal’s phone flew out of his hand and skidded to the floor and under the seat in front of him.  
  
“Oh we’re here,” Crystal said brightly, unaware of Harry’s turmoil. She opened her door and got out, followed by the driver. They started to pull Harry’s things out of the trunk while he bent over and tried to get Crystal’s phone before she noticed he dropped it. His hand patted around under the seat but he couldn’t feel the phone. He was bending over more, trying to reach as far as he could when the front door opened again and the cabby reached in to grab his credit card reader, Crystal right behind him.  
  
They both looked at Harry, laying down on the floor of the back seat with his arm all the way under the chair in front of him.  
  
“You alright there, Harry?” Crystal asked.   
  
“I—” Harry started. He sighed as he sat back up. “I dropped your phone when we stopped. It fell under the seat but I can’t find it.  
  
The driver stretched further into the car and grabbed something in front of the passenger seat, well beyond where Harry would have been able to reach from behind.   
  
“This it?” he asked.  
  
“Yup,” Crystal said breezily, “see Harry it’s alright.”  
  
Harry could see a large crack on the front of the phone that wasn’t there before and knew it absolutely wasn’t alright, but he nodded mutely. Crystal paid the cabby, and Harry grabbed Hedwig’s cage from front seat and got out to walk up to the row house with his trunk in front of the door. He wondered if it’d be better to pull the trunk back to the car, sure that once Crystal looked closer at her phone she’d send him back to the Dursleys.   
  
He heard the cab drive off though, and Aunt Crystal walk up the path to unlock the door. Harry opened his mouth to say something, maybe an apology, but she just asked him to grab the other end of his trunk and follow her up the stairs to his bedroom.  
  
“I hope you like this one,” she said. “I already set up the beds and all, but if you prefer the other room we could swap out.”  
  
Harry couldn’t stand it any longer.  
  
“I broke your phone,” he nearly screamed. Crystal jumped and looked at in mild alarm. He lowered his voice and kept going. “I dropped your phone and it broke. I’ve been with you less than an hour and I already broke something expensive. I know you haven’t seen it yet, but I broke your phone. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”  
  
Crystal pulled her phone out of her pocket and looked at the crack. She pushed a button and it lit up same as before. Then she shrugged.  
  
“These things are pieces of crap,” she said casually. “They break all the time. Still works, see?” She showed Harry the screen with the menu right where he had left it. Harry didn't feel very reassured.  
  
“Harry, it’s no problem, really,” she said. “I’m not mad. And the phone wasn’t expensive. I mean it probably was, but I didn’t buy it. It was a gift from a friend but he’s loaded. I could call him tonight and there’ll be a new phone in the mail tomorrow. I could ask him for one for you if you want, but Lily used to say magic doesn’t like technology very much. There’s really nothing wrong, I promise you.”  
  
“Okay,” Harry said slowly. His aunt smiled warmly, but there was something in her eyes that said she wanted to say something else. He braced for some sort of scolding, but she shook the look off.  
  
“Did you pick out what you want?” she asked instead. Harry nodded. “Alright then I’ll place the order. It’ll be here in an hour or so. But before you start unpacking, you just never answered.”  
  
Harry looked at her dumbly.  
  
“Do you like the room?”  
  
The room they were standing in was about the same size as Dudley’s spare bedroom on Privet Drive, the one Harry stayed in the past few summers. But the window that looked out onto the back garden was much larger. The only furniture in it was a bare bed, an empty bookshelf, and a side table. There weren’t any broken toys or holes in the walls from some temper tantrum Dudley threw.  
  
“It’s perfect.”


	3. Confessions

“I’m sorry, Harry.”  
  
Harry looked up from picking through his fourth helping of chicken korma that week.  
  
“It’s alright,” he said. “I really like all the food we’ve been ordering. It’s not your fault the post lost your kitchenware.”  
  
Crystal smiled a little sadly, and Harry took in the odd look in her eye with more than a bit of trepidation.  
  
“No, I’m—” she looked around the as if looking for a cue card. “I’m sorry we couldn’t do this earlier. That you couldn’t live with me earlier.”  
  
“Well, you lived in America,” Harry said quietly. He’d been enjoying living with Aunt Crystal, but he’d been working rather hard not to get bitter that she hadn’t wanted him before now. Before he could replace her dead daughter.  
  
“I know it wasn’t easy on you, living with Petunia and Vernon,” she said. Harry clenched his fist. “I know they aren't easy people in general. I thought at first I was being too hard on my sister, thinking too badly of her. But the longer you’re here the more the pit in my stomach grows. I wish I could have spared you some of that.”  
  
Harry didn’t really know how to take this. Plenty of grown ups had taken note of how unhappy Harry was with his relatives. How poorly they treated him. None of them had been in as easy a position to get him out as Crystal though. Usually he downplayed how miserable his childhood was to make them feel less awkward, but a part of Harry wanted Crystal to feel bad. Another part feared if he made her feel too badly it could ruin the easy peace they had made since he moved in.  
  
“You lived in America,” Harry said again instead of any blame he wanted to maybe lay at her feet. “If I moved there to live with you earlier I might never have gone to Hogwarts and met all my friends.”  
  
“Harry,” Crystal said, and waited until Harry looked at her before continuing, “did they ever hit you?”  
  
She was near tears as she asked it.  
  
“No,” Harry said. He didn’t want to make her cry.

She probably saw that he was lying though, because she just shook her head sadly.  
  
“Petunia’s still a nosy little gossip, isn’t she?” Crystal said. Harry thought at first she was changing the subject and latched on.  
  
“Yeah, she’s always spying on the neighbors.”  
  
“What did she say about me? About my family?”  
  
“She got kind of nasty,” Harry said slowly, sure she wouldn’t want to actually know.  
  
“Come on, tell me the truth. I can take it.”  
  
“She said you were a deviant. That you were crazy and all this other stuff. Obviously it’s not true or anything. You’re loads better than she is.”  
  
“Do you know where I went last night?”   
  
It was another bizarre turn in the conversation, and Harry wasn’t sure he wanted to be on the ride any longer. He didn’t know where Crystal was going with any of this.  
  
“When I left you alone?” She asked again. Harry showed no sign of answering. “I went to an addicts’ meeting.”  
  
“What?” Harry asked, forgetting to be quiet.  
  
“Narcotics Anonymous,” she clarified. “It was the first thing I found when I moved here. There’s one somewhere in the city every day. I have a list of them all so I can find one any time I really need it, but mostly I just go to the same meeting once a week.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Petunia didn’t lie about me, Harry. Really what she said was just dancing around the real issue. I’m a drug addict. I was an addict for years. I was using even when I lived here before, but it got worse when I moved to Gotham. When I got married. I’ve been clean for, well I guess only 6 months now. I had a year to my name before—”  
  
Crystal didn’t finish her though, but Harry thought he knew. He didn’t know much about drugs or drug addicts, but he couldn’t imagine a more dangerous trigger for a relapse than the death of a child.  
  
“So,” Crystal cleared her throat, “what did she used to say about my husband?”  
  
“That he was a low-life leach,” he said automatically.  
  
“Still too nice,” Crystal mused. It might have been the only time anyone had ever called Petunia Dursley nice. “Arthur was a son of a bitch.”  
  
Harry snorted, as he did whenever Crystal swore. She smiled and seemed to rally to keep going.  
  
“He was a criminal. He robbed banks, that was his big thing. But he had lots of dealings with gangs and mobs in town. Sometimes fenced stolen goods. I mean he used to be a genius cryptologist, so fencing at least used some of his skills, but he preferred being an all around career criminal. He was in an out of jail for years.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Harry said, unsure of what else to say.  
  
“Harry, just tell me truly, did Vernon or Petunia beat you?”  
  
It seemed silly to try to sugarcoat anything to Crystal now.  
  
“Just a few times,” he said. “Mostly they just yelled at me. Or locked me in my room. Sometimes they didn’t give me meals.”  
  
“There’s nothing just about abuse, Harry,” Crystal said firmly. “I need you to know that. I need you to still feel whatever anger you want at the Dursleys. I need you to know that you didn’t deserve any of it. But I also,” she swallowed thickly, “need you to know that America or not you couldn’t have lived with us. That you would never have wanted to live with us. Stephanie’s childhood—”  
  
Harry held his breath.   
  
“I love my daughter,” Crystal said, “but I didn’t do right by her. I was high every time her father smacked her around, every time some lowlife came into our home and tried to steal back some money Arthur scammed from him, every time she needed a mother. I was high when they found her body. She was a brilliant girl, bright and strong and smart. She didn’t deserve the childhood I gave her. And you didn’t deserve whatever I could have given you any more than you deserved what you got. So I’m just — I’m sorry, Harry.”  
  
He cleared his throat, sure that something wise and empathetic would come out of his mouth.  
  
Instead: “I never had Indian food before I lived with you. I really like it. I kinda hope your kitchen stuff doesn’t come tomorrow, because I was thinking about that place across from the one we ordered from that first day I was here. I saw and advert for cheesy naan. It sounds good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was really on the fence about whether this chapter was really necessary. In the end it kind all fell down to my over-abundant feelings on Harry's safety and well-being. I just want to address how shitty his life was, how adults failed him, and how this home can be better by being open and honest.
> 
> So sorry nothing really happened in this chapter, I was focused on the healing. I'm gonna double update so we get healing and plot.


	4. Family Dinner

Crystal’s missing boxes didn’t turn up the next day, or any stretch of the word “soon,” and in fact at the last call to the post office their estimation was “looks like we accidentally sent them to Moscow, but then they were on their way back to us when they got stuck in a storm in Dublin, and once it lifted they went to Paris for some reason so I don’t know Mrs. Brown maybe give them another week?”  
  
The boxes were still missing well over a month after Harry moved in, when everything else had been unpacked and the house was so lived in that cleaning up for the Weasleys' upcoming visit was proving to be a challenge.   
  
“Ok I know your friends haven’t been eating curry every day for the past month, but I figure for your last meal here for the summer I should do something special for you,” Crystal called from the front door. Harry stopped organizing his books and stood up to help her carry the bags in.   
  
“So, I got us all tapas!” she said happily. “We can all share and talk, I just hope there’s enough for everybody. I know you said your friend has a big family. How many of them are coming tonight?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Harry said. “At least four, I’d say. But probably no more than seven.”  
  
Crystal shot him an exasperated look, but Harry had been living with her long enough now to see the fondness in it.   
  
“That’s not a very helpful window, kid.”  
  
Harry shrugged. Ron and he had been writing back and forth all summer talking about the Quidditch World Cup, hoping they could both go. When Ron’s dad had managed to get tickets for not just the whole Weasley clan but also Hermione and Harry, Crystal had been brought in to the conversation to coordinate how they’d pick Harry up. Most of the planning had been about dates and times hooking up a floo for the day and if they’d like to stay for dinner and whether any of them had any allergies, not about exactly how many Weasleys would be coming with Ron and his dad.   
  
“Well I got enough to feed a football team, so let’s hope that’s enough,” she said.  
  
“American or real?” Harry asked cheekily.  
  
“Go back to putting your homework away,” she said by way of answer. “And grab my camera, will you?”   
  
Ron and Hermione had been as thrilled to hear the news that Harry moved out of the Dursleys to live with his Aunt Crystal as Harry himself was. According to Ron, the rest of his family was happy too. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley had never met Petunia or Vernon, of course, but Fred and George had certainly seen how they made Harry live and passed along their displeasure. Harry didn’t want to think about how this little pick-up would go if the Weasleys had had to go to Privet Drive instead of Crystal’s townhouse in Little India.   
  
Crystal was also thrilled to get to meet some of Harry’s friends. She had asked a lot of questions about his time at school, his teachers, and even magic in general. She never seemed bitter or jealous of her youngest sister’s world, unlike Petunia Dursley, and seemed happy as long as Harry was happy. Past years he’d often separated his muggle life from his wizard life, like it was just a switch that could be turned off and on during the summer months, but this year he was excited for his muggle guardian to meet his favorite witches and wizards.  
  
Just as he was putting the last of his books back in his trunk he heard a fire spring to life in the small, normally nonfunctioning, grate. He quickly grabbed Crystal’s camera from her desk and turned to take a shot just as Ron crawled out of the tiny fireplace, coughing out soot.  
  
“Why’s that so small?” Ron wheezed as someone got stuck behind him.  
  
“Muggles don’t use their fireplaces for travel, Ron,” Harry said, still snapping pictures. “I guess I could have warned you,” he snapped more as Fred and George tried to detangle themselves while still crawling out behind him, “but this was a bit funnier.”  
  
He stopped taking pictures when he saw the next person to get trapped was Mr. Weasley. He’d mock any of his friends for sure, but not his friends’ dad. That was too much.  
  
“Oh no,” said Aunt Crystal from the door to the kitchen. “Here let me help. What do you need? Do you need some towels? Let me get some towels to clean you off.”  
  
When the traffic jam had cleared from the fireplace and everyone was washed up, there were actually eight guests for dinner. Crystal gave Harry a subtly mocking glare when Percy Weasley came in behind his mother, but didn’t mention it otherwise. She still didn’t have any plates or utensils or anything, so it wasn’t hard to pull out more plastic kitchenware to make sure everyone could eat.  
  
Harry, Aunt Crystal, Ron, Fred, George, Ginny, Percy, Hermione, Mr. Weasley, and Mrs. Weasley all sat in the living room eating platefuls of food off their lap while they chatted. Apparently, as thrilled Harry’s friends were that he was in a new house, they were still curious and wanted to make sure he was really happy by all showing up together to meet his Aunt. She was a good sport, for the most part. Explaining every odd trinket Mr. Weasley asked about while fielding Mrs. Weasley’s tests to make sure she was feeding Harry enough.  
  
“I love all these pictures,” Mr. Weasley said, looking around to the walls. “They don’t move at all, it’s just so fascinating.”  
  
Crystal laughed lightly and held up her camera.   
  
“If you want some muggle photos for yourself you can borrow my camera for your game,” she offered. Harry thought that was beyond generous of her. That camera was near attached to her hand. She was always taking pictures of Harry doing anything slightly less than mundane. _First box unpacked at the new house_ , she’d say while snapping a picture. _First homework assignment done for the summer_ , _Harry’s first time eating cheesy naan food_ , _Our first movie night together_. He’d pretended to find it weird or embarrassing, but he’d never had pictures of himself at the Dursleys’ and in truth it made him love his aunt immediately.  
  
The pictures started to fill the walls and shelves the same time as Crystal was unpacking other photos. Older photos of her daughter. The way pictures of Harry were mixed in with pictures of Stephanie made it seem like they grew up together.  
  
“Could I really?” Mr. Weasley asked awestruck. Crystal nodded and he gingerly took the camera from her.  
  
“You are so kind, Crystal!” Mrs. Weasley said.  
  
“It’s really no problem at all, Molly,” Crystal said, “it’s important to keep memories. I started taking photographs far too late.”  
  
Everyone in the room laughed a little at that, for really nearly every surface of every room in the house was covered in pictures.  
  
“Well your pictures are lovely, as is your daughter,” Mrs. Weasley said, and Harry could feel Ron hold his breath next to him. Harry didn’t know why Ron was upset; any picture that wasn’t of Harry himself was of Stephanie, it’s not like it was hard to guess. Then the bomb dropped and he understood. “Will we get to meet her tonight? Maybe we can come again after the match when she’s here?”  
  
Ron and Hermione knew that Stephanie Brown was dead, but he didn't think he told anyone else besides his school roommates. Ron had apparently also not anyone, not even his parents.  
  
The three of them looked to Crystal while Harry desperately tried to think of something to say to break the ice. To make Crystal not sad. To do something to save the dinner.  
  
“No,” Crystal said faintly. “No actually Stephanie died last Christmas.”  
  
Mr. and Mrs. Weasley gasped rather dramatically, but otherwise it was so quiet you could hear the cars outside on the street.  
  
“Also, the pictures aren’t mine, actually,” Crystal said closer to a normal voice. “Her boyfriend had a talent for photography. After she died I realized I just didn’t have many pictures of her. I think I just mentioned it in passing to him at the service and the next day he gave me this big box full of prints. He’s a real artist, you can tell.” Crystal was so calm it was spreading to the rest of the diners and the mood was starting to restore. Harry could tell there were a million questions floating in the air, could tell all Mrs. Weasley wanted to do was throw down her food and give Crystal a huge, but Crystal was controlling the conversation and pushing it a direction she needed it to go and everyone was letting her.  
  
“I keep waiting for someone to discover all these photos in my house and offer to buy them or something. Original Tim Drakes will be a commodity some day, I’m sure.”  
  
“They are,” Mrs. Weasley said slowly, “very beautiful.”  
  
“They are,” Crystal said quietly. Then in a louder voice, “I’m just sorry poor Harry is suck with my paltry skills. He took to it right away, didn’t you Harry? I still cut off his head half the time.”  
  
Fred and George led the charge for laughing at that, and made a few jokes about Nearly Headless Nick, the explanation for which alone took the conversation in an entirely other direction.   
  
When the food was gone and it was time for the Weasleys and Harry and Hermione to leave, the grown ups talked about keeping in touch, maybe having another dinner before Harry and the others had to go back to school and maybe Crystal could come to the Burrow for the next dinner.  
  
They all filed out, giving big hugs Crystal as they left, and glances to the nearest picture of Stephanie they could see. It was almost like saying goodbye to her as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, a double update.


	5. Deep Dark Waters

There was always someone after the a Pit.   
  
Some historian or amateur explorer who thinks they can finally find the Fountain of Youth. Talia’s father usually paid them no mind, but when one of them seemed to be getting close to finding any Pit, he always took one of two options; either go to war with them, or go underground. It depended on if the searcher had anything Ra’s wanted.   
  
If they had resources or potential as a servant, it was war. It was show off the full power of Ra’s al Ghul and his League of Assassins, scare them away or into servitude. If the searcher had nothing, Ra’s ordered every mission on standby lest one of them accidentally show the way back to a base, even if the assassin was based somewhere without a Pit. Pit usage was definitely forbidden, but that rule only applied to his daughters anyway as no other lieutenant of Ra’s al Ghul was allowed to so much as dream of using one of his Lazarus Pits.  
  
Voldemort was not the first wizard to come searching for eternal youth by way of a Lazarus Pit, but he was the first to get as close as he had. Talia vaguely remembered the first time he came searching over a decade ago, but he died before Ra’s worried too much about him. Or apparently not died, because some form of him was back on the trail, and close enough that Ra’s had ordered Talia to leave her Pit alone.   
  
“Father won’t be happy about this,” Nyssa said from the shadows. Talia cocked her head. Her sister’s presence was a surprise, but not a hindrance. It meant that Ra’s likely knew that Talia wasn’t heeding his command, but that he wasn’t disappointed enough to intervene himself.  
  
“I’m a mother, Sister,” Talia said by way of greeting. “I can’t leave my children dead when I am able to save them.”  
  
Nyssa sighed dramatically.  
  
“You have one child. And he’s fine. This is just a petty revenge plot that can wait until we know the Pits are secure.”  
  
“My son has brothers and sisters and I consider each and every one of them my own, whether I birthed them or not. And I will have birthed them myself once I let the Lazarus Pit make them reborn.”  
  
“That so-called-Dark Lord was moments away from discovering a Pit less than a week ago,” Nyssa insisted.  
  
“He was moments away from breaking a loudmouth. Then the loudmouth died, taking his information with him. Now he has no leads,” Talia argued.  
  
“He’s still on the trail.”  
  
“He’s on a wild goose chase. No one in my household would dare speak a word no matter the torture. Father should put all his focus on the other Pits because this one is very well secure. Using it tonight won’t effect its safekeeping one bit.”  
  
“You are overstepping, Sister,” Nyssa whispered in Talia’s ear. Talia didn’t move, just let her sister puff her feathers and make a show of loyalty that they both knew was far fickler than their father would like to believe. When you live as long as their family did, allegiance was a thing easily gained and lost. Nyssa might be playing at the obedient daughter to Talia’s rebel without a cause now, but not too long ago their role’s were revered. They’ll reverse again soon, Talia imagined.  
  
“I hear my little birds calling,” Talia said, and walked away without a backwards glance to enter the large cavern with a small Lazarus Pit bubbling in its center. There was a larger entryway across from the way she came in that half a dozen of her most loyal assassins were entering from carrying their charges.  
  
They looked to her as she entered, but she had eyes only for their decaying guests. The boy was mostly bones wrapped in a fine suit that was the very height of fashion four years ago. The girl still had some dry skin peeking out of a dress Talia was sure was more expensive than anything she had owned in life. She tried not to snort at her Beloved treating his children better in death than in life. Fathers were like that though; trying to buy their children’s love. Mothers were the ones who knew what was best for their children.   
  
“They’ve waited long enough,” Talia called out. “Throw them in.”  
  
Neither body made much of a splash. The room was filled with silence while everyone looked at the Pit waiting. The girl came up first, but the boy wasn’t too far behind. They both screamed and flailed as first their cartilage grew their bones back together, their muscles came back in, their skin grew around their bodies and their blood flowed through their reborn veins. The girl almost drowned trying to escape before her body was strong enough to pull her up the ledge, but it’s impossible to drown in water that heals your lungs even as it fills them.  
  
When they were finally ready they both pulled themselves out on the side Talia was standing on.  
  
Because of course they recognize their Mother.  
  
“Children,” she said warmly, holding her arms out for them. Neither came to her. They were both laying at the edge of the water, shaking and crying. The boy was clutching his own head, looking like he might start beating himself. It was a dangerous path to walk down if your first act alive was self mutilation.  
  
“Robin,” Talia said firmly. They both looked up at her immediately. “Come here,” she said, “you need help. Let me help you.”  
  
The boy started crawling toward her first. The girl waited until he was halfway there to try to stand and follow. She didn’t walk necessarily, but it was close enough that she made it to Talia the same time as her brother.  
  
“Who are you?” the boy said hoarsely, struggling to make his mouth make the right sounds. “Where am I? What do you want?”  
  
“So many questions,” Talia said. “I just want to help you. Both of you,” she said deliberately. The boy looked back furtively at the girl, then more around the room.   
  
“I don’t know who she is. I don’t know who you are,” he said roughly. “I just want some answers.”  
  
“You have some answers, don’t you dear?” Talia said to the girl. Her gaze was steadier. Her face blanker as she looked directly at boy.  
  
“You’re Jason Todd,” the girl said quietly. The boy jumped and glared at her. “I think....I think she’s Talia al Ghul.” Jason looked suspiciously between Talia and the girl.  
  
“Who are you?” he asked.  
  
“She’s Stephanie Brown. She’s your sister,” Talia said.  
  
“I don’t have a sister.”  
  
“Because of Batman,” Stephanie said. “I was Robin. I was... _a_ Robin. But I died.”  
  
It took a long moment for Jason to respond, but Talia didn’t want to interrupt their first meeting.  
  
“I died, too,” Jason said finally. Slowly. It was more sudden with him, Talia knew. Stephanie took days to die, but Jason was gone in an instant.   
  
“That was a Lazarus Pit,” Stephanie said. “She put us in a Lazarus Pit.”  
  
“Why?” Jason asked. They were both looking at her now.  
  
“I already told you,” Talia said, “I just want to help you fly again, my Robins.”


	6. The Beginning

“Petrificus Totalus!”  
  
Harry collapsed next to Cedric Diggory’s corpse. He tried to keep his eyes closed, tried not to look at the older boy. Cedric’s eyes were open, Harry knew. They had been open when Peter Pettigrew shot him with the killing curse so they were open now, as his body lay prone on the wet grass.  
  
“Bring the dead one,” hissed the thing Pettigrew was carrying. Voldemort, Harry suspected, but he didn’t know how. Or what, really. It was small, and wrapped up like a baby.  
  
“Yes, Master,” Pettigrew said. Cedric’s body flew up above Harry, and Harry soon followed. Pettigrew levitated them both up over the grass. “Should we call the others, Master?”  
  
“Not yet.”  
  
“But,” Pettigrew started. He sounded terrified; Harry didn’t know where he got the nerve to continue, “What about the guards? I can’t fight them all off, Master.”  
  
“There will be no guards. This is a new one. Meant just for me.”  
  
When Harry and Cedric had been transported away from the maze, he’d suspected something was not quite right. They were in the middle of a misty field with tall grass that had hidden Pettigrew’s approach until it was too late. Voldemort had called Cedric a spare, Harry remembered. They had planned this whole thing, somehow. Gotten to the Cup. Expected Harry to get there first. Cedric…he wasn’t expected. And now his body was being carted around for a reason Harry couldn’t even fathom.  
  
“Stop,” Voldemort said. “It’s down there.”  
  
Suddenly Harry and Cedric were released. Instead of falling a foot or two to the ground, they fell over 10 feet, through a hole in the earth to a subterranean cave.  
  
Harry was partially on top of Cedric’s body. He wanted to scream out, to jump off and apologize, but he was still mostly petrified, only able to move the fingers on one hand. Pettigrew climbed down slowly, careful of the bundle of evil in his arms. When he reached the bottom, he petrified Harry again. His fingers stopped moving.  
  
“Lumos,” Pettigrew whispered.  
  
The cave lit up. Harry couldn’t see anything but the muddy ground and Cedric Diggory’s shoulder, but whatever it was must have been truly stunning. Pettigrew inhaled loudly, and even Voldemort seemed to sigh in amazement.  
  
“Are you sure this is it, Master?”  
  
Voldemort hissed rather than replying.  
  
“Do you need a test?” he asked over Pettigrew’s whimpered apologies.  
  
“N-no, my-my Lord, I’m s-sorry, my Lord,” he stammered. “Of-of-of course your spell worked, my Lord, and we’ve f-found a new Pit.”  
  
“We shall have a test either way,” Voldemort said. “Use the spare.”  
  
Cedric was lifted right from under Harry. As the body flew up, Harry rolled over and fell so he could see what was happening.  
  
There was a pond in the middle of the cave. It must have been some sort of hot spring, because it was bubbling and steaming. Pettigrew floated Cedric over the water and dropped him in.  
  
Harry closed his eyes and tried to tell himself it didn’t matter. Cedric was dead already. Harry would be dead soon. Harry’s body would undoubtedly be found so Voldemort could prove he killed him. He just wished Cedric’s would be, too. Give his father some closure or something.  
  
Screams suddenly filled the cave and Harry’s eyes shot open. Something was splashing in the water. He watched horrified, as something crawled to the edge of the pond and clawed its way out.  
  
It was Cedric.  
  
Cedric who was dead.  
  
He was dead, absolutely. Harry had been resting on his chest, heard the utter lack of a heartbeat. He didn’t survive the killing curse. But there he was, writhing around in the mud just a few feet away screaming in pain.  
  
Voldemort began to laugh as Cedric’s screams became sobs. The walls echoed with Cedric’s pain and Voldemort’s glee, and Harry had never been more terrified in his life.  
  
“Get him out of the way,” Voldemort hissed at Pettigrew. He flicked his wand and Cedric went flying backwards passed Harry. It wasn’t a large cave, though, and Cedric rolled down the wall and ended up near Harry. He was still crying softly.  
  
He wished he could crane his neck, try to see if Cedric was really Cedric, or if something had possessed his body. What was that spring? Or had Pettigrew called it a pit?  
  
“You’re lucky, Harry,” Voldemort as Pettigrew began to unwrap his bundle. Harry tried to look away, but he was struck with another petrifying spell just as he got his neck to turn half an inch.  
  
“You shall bear witness to my rise. You shall witness my disciples return. And then you will die.”  
  
He watched as Pettigrew lowered Voldemort’s tiny, wrinkled, dead looking body into the water far gentler than Cedric had been dropped.  
  
Before he could start screaming as Cedric had, Harry heard something rumble above them. He wondered if it was Death Eaters, there early for their Master’s return.  
  
The screams came just then, before Harry could try to focus more on the sound.  
  
Voldemort began to thrash in the water as Cedric had, but with each passing moment the disturbance grew larger and larger. His body was growing, Harry realized in horror. The tiny baby sized thing that he was living in was growing into a proper body. He was coming back. He was really coming back.  
  
Just as his hand grabbed at the side of the pool, a shadow shifted above them, and something dropped down into the cave.  
  
Voldemort pulled himself out of the water in time to see something hit Pettigrew in the chest and drop him down. The Dark Lord was in no mind to notice even if he had cared, for just like Cedric, he was writhing around on the ground as though he were having a seizure.  
  
Harry could see though. And Harry saw blood spread over Pettigrew’s chest, a knife lodged right over his heart.  
  
“Harry?” Cedric said weakly. Harry tried to look at him but he was still petrified, still facing the Pit. “What’s…?”  
  
A figure rose up in the middle of the cave. It walked over to Pettigrew’s body and pulled the knife out. Then it turned to look at Harry and Cedric. Harry began grunting and humming, anything he could to get Cedric’s attention. To get Cedric to notice the quiet killer in their midst. Cedric was over 17, he could apparate out of there. Maybe he could take Harry with him, or maybe he couldn’t. But one of them ought to survive this.  
  
“Avada Kedavra.”  
  
Harry was saved by Voldemort.  
  
He was no longer writhing on the floor. Hadn’t started sobbing or crying or looking around dazed. He’d grabbed Pettigrew’s wand and killed the strange assassin.  
  
Harry didn’t want to know why Voldemort had saved him. Sure that it wasn’t to protect his life, but to prolong it enough for Voldemort to issue his own punishment on Harry. Cedric grabbed Harry, and he felt himself being squeezed and pulled in every direction for less than a second before it stopped.  
  
They were back in the grass above the cave. Cedric pulled him to his feet, and they stumbled around in a circle trying to find any way out. Harry thought of the Cup and wished his mouth worked so he could tell Cedric about it.  
  
“The Cup,” Cedric said on his own. “Where’s the cup?”  
  
They didn’t find the cup, but they found a helicopter. It was parked 100 feet away, above where Harry thought the cave entrance was. The grass was so tall he and Cedric were mostly hidden, but if there were any more assassins within the craft Harry knew they’d never see them coming.  
  
The sky above them darkened, shadows streaking across it. Then the ground shook, and the helicopter started to sink down as a spell flew up from bellow.  
  
“HARRY POTTER!” Voldemort’s voice called out, and Harry watched as he leaped above the cave and landed somewhere in the grass. The shadows from the sky became a circle and flew toward Voldemort, congregating around him.  
  
Cedric pushed Harry back down and crouched with him. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a broken wand. Harry was finally able to turn his head enough to face him and they shared a look.  
  
Assassins, Death Eaters, and Voldemort himself were all after them and their only defense was tall grass.  
  
Then grunts and screams rang out over the field and Harry realized something very important.  
  
“They’re not after us,” he said hoarsely. Cedric looked at him.  
  
“The assassin. It killed Pettigrew. The rest of them…they’re after Voldemort, not us.”  
  
“Why?” Cedric whispered.  
  
“Ra’s al Ghul doesn’t like people touching this things.”  
  
Harry and Cedric had to try very hard not to jump or shout at the voice. He was wrong. He was so very wrong. The assassins were after them, and one of them had found them.  
  
It was a girl. She was crouching like them, but Harry could see a few pieces of a purple, black, and grey suit that blended perfectly into the nighttime shadows. He couldn’t see any of her face, though. She wore huge goggles shaped like cat eyes and a mask that covered her nose and mouth. She was playing with a knife in one hand.  
  
She cocked her head at them almost curiously, and Harry had to seriously wonder why they weren’t dead yet.  
  
“You’re Harry Potter?” she asked.  
  
“You-you’re not gonna kill him,” demanded Cedric. He crawled over to crouch in front of Harry.  
  
“No,” the girl agreed, “I’m not. Let’s get you out of here.”


	7. Into the Fire

Harry and Cedric landed back in at Hogwarts to find that the hedges of the maze were all gone and the Cup had dropped them off in the middle of the quidditch pitch as they knew it. The stands were still full of people, but their teachers were milling around in the grass.  
  
When they appeared, every head turned to look at them. There was a flurry of activity as people rushed toward them, and Harry felt Cedric relax next to him and lay back in the grass to look at the stars as they waited for rescue. Most of Harry’s muscles had come back by this point, but he was still rather stiff.  
  
“Harry! Cedric! Are you alright?” Dumbledore was the first one to reach the boys and look down on them, but Madam Pomfrey was right behind him, asking after their health. Dumbledore stayed quiet for a moment. Harry saw he was staring at the top of Cedric’s head and turned to see what was wrong.  
  
In the heat of Voldemort’s return and following the purple assassin in a silent search for the goblet while spells and knives flew overhead, Harry hadn’t thought to see if the magic water from the cave had changed Cedric beyond his strange behavior when he first woke up. But there was a thick white strip of hair now. It was plastered to Cedric’s forehead with sweat, making look like he had tried to be fashionable and dye just his bangs.   
  
“Where did you go?” Dumbledore asked at last, as other professors began filing in around them, McGonagall and Sprout at the front of the pack.   
  
“Can you stand?” McGonagall asked instead of letting them answer the Headmaster.  
  
“Are you hurt?” Sprout asked as well.  
  
“You-Know-Who is back,” Cedric said gasping.  
  
The adults all sprung back as if cursed.   
  
Then coursed forward again to question them both with more vigor. The swell of voices made Harry want to curl up in a ball, but he didn’t think it’d look very becoming of the Boy Who Lived after a run-in with a fully powered Voldemort.  
  
Or well. Harry looked to Cedric, who had been blast with a killing curse point blank. Who had been dead and then alive again. One of the boys who lived.  
  
“Stop smothering the boys!” Professor Moody called, limping onto the scene and pushing his way to the front of the pack. He reached out a hand and Cedric grabbed it to hoisted himself up, holding out his own to Harry once he was up.  
  
“We need to go to the Hospital Wing at once,” Madam Pomfrey said. She was practically bouncing as she hovered around Harry and Cedric and Moody. Harry felt himself get more claustrophobic surrounded by the crowd standing than he had been laying in the grass. The old auror growled the closer everyone began standing and started pulling Harry and Cedric along. Harry was still limping from his multiple petrifications, and Cedric had been wobbly ever since he crawled out of the water. So it was very slow going.  
  
“Meet us up there, Madam Pomfrey,” Moody said. “Get some beds ready for them, we’ll be right behind. They need to take it at their own pace.” Madam Pomfrey nodded shakily. She gently touched each of them on the shoulder as if to reassure herself that they were there at all, then ran ahead up to the castle.  
  
“The crowd heard the boy,” Moody said to the remaining teachers. Harry noticed for the first time the kind of unrest going on in the stands. It was a stampede. The professors noticed, too.  
  
“We need to calm them,” McGonagall said. Professor Sprout nodded next to her and then they, too, touched Harry and Cedric gently on the shoulder before turning to address the crowd. Someone screamed from the crowd and Dumbledore turned his head like a dog hearing his call. He headed to the stands to quell the unrest as well, and Moody, Cedric, and Harry all made their slow way up to the castle.   
  
“Harry!”  
  
Just outside the pitch Harry heard his Aunt Crystal call out to him. All the families of the Champions had been invited to the third task, he remembered. He sagged a bit more as she ran into view, followed by the large black dog that was Sirius and man who looked only vaguely familiar.  
  
“Cedric! Oh Cedric thank god you’re alright,” said the man as he came up and grabbed for his son. Cedric hugged him and they staggered for a moment as Mr. Diggory had to take most of his son’s weight. Crystal didn’t try that with Harry, content to let Moody half-carry him to the castle, but she did clutch his free arm fiercely the whole way.  
  
“Yes,” Moody said uneasily, “glad you found us. We’re just going to the Hospital Wing, though. No cause for alarm. You should go back to reassure the crowds.”  
  
“Absolutely not,” Crystal said, gripping Harry’s arm even tighter.   
  
They were walking a bit faster now that Mr. Diggory was helping Cedric walk, but after they passed through the main doors to the castle Moody stopped them all.  
  
“Go back to the quidditch pitch,” he tried again.  
  
“Sod off, Alaster, I’m staying with my son,” Mr. Diggory said, before he flew back suddenly from a stunning curse no one saw Moody cast. But his wand was up and pointed ominously at Cedric, who had collapsed on the ground once his father wasn’t holding his weight any more.  
  
Before Moody could get a spell off his arm was knocked aside by Crystal, who had grabbed a potted plant from the wall and was holding it out like a weapon. Moody probably thought he didn’t need to worry about her and Sirius, as they were apparently just a muggle and dog, until after he’d taken care of the wizards. Unfortunately for him, Crystal was more of a scrappy survivor than he’d thought.  
  
“What’s wrong with you?!” she shouted, and whacked him over the head when he tried to raise his wand again.  
  
“I don't think that’s Moody,” Sirius said. Harry didn’t see him transform, and apparently no one else had either. Crystal screamed wordlessly at the man who used to be a dog. Harry had brought him over to sit with her before the task and introduced as “just a friendly stray that hangs out in the woods sometimes,” not "my convict godfather who escaped from prison."  
  
“Sirius Black!” Cedric shouted, pointed at Sirius with his broken wand. Harry hoped he wouldn’t use it. Ron’s experience with a broken wand two years previous had taught him how dangerous a backfired spell could be.  
  
“He’s innocent!” Harry said, limping to stand in front of Sirius. “The man who revived Voldemort, the one the assassin killed, that was Peter Pettigrew. He framed Sirius.”  
  
“Why was he a dog?” Crystal yelled, holding her plant out threateningly in front of her.  
  
“Assassin?” Sirius asked at the same time.  
  
“Urgh,” Amos Diggory grumbled from the corner of the hall.  
  
“What is this racket?” Madam Pomfrey called, coming down the steps from the Hospital Wing.  
  
Harry looked back and forth between them all, unsure of which question to answer first. He didn’t have much opportunity to answer any, because Madam Pomfrey kept going.  
  
She gasped dramatically and held out her wand at Sirius who put his hands up in surrender.  
  
“Sirius Black!” she yelled.  
  
“Innocent!” Harry yelled again.  
  
“Poppy you need to tie up Moody before he wakes up, I think he’s an imposter,” Sirius said.   
  
She snorted of all things and began slowly walking down the steps.  
  
“You’re one to talk about imposters,” she said.  
  
Sirius groaned as loud as Mr. Diggory in his corner did.  
  
“Please, tie me up if you have to just tie him up, too!” Sirius called out. Ropes immediately sprung from Madam Pomfrey’s wand and wrapped around Sirius. He collapsed to the ground.  
  
Crystal finally lowered her plant to point at the imposter Moody.  
  
“Him too, please,” she said when Pomfrey made no move to do so. Pomfrey looked suspiciously at her, but Cedric spoke up to assure her.  
  
“He attacked us,” Cedric said. “My dad is hurt, please just tie him up and get us to the Hospital Wing.”


	8. A Farce

They’d only just got to the Hospital Wing when Dumbledore burst through the door with the Minister of Magic and Professors McGonagall, Sprout, Snape, and Flitwick on his tail. Crystal was helping Madam Pomfrey however she could when they slammed open the door, but Harry was proud to see after so many scares in the day she didn’t jump at all. Just gave them a pointed look for being dramatic and continued to hand Cedric a potion.  
  
“Took you long enough,” Madam Pomfrey said waspishly. “Don’t worry, I’ve caught the dark wizard for you.” She gestured vaguely toward the end of the hall where Sirius and Moody were tied up in beds far from where Harry and the Diggory’s were being tended to.  
  
“She means Moody,” Harry said quickly, giving a wary eye to Snape who had helped to ruin any chance of exoneration Sirius had last year. “Professor Moody is an imposter.”  
  
“We think he’s an imposter,” Cedric corrected. Harry glared at him but he continued. “He attacked us as soon as we got to the castle. We don’t know why. So he’s probably just not Moody.” Harry calmed down a little bit.  
  
“I think you boys should start at the beginning,” Professor Dumbledore said, pulling up a chair to sit at the end of their beds.  
  
So Harry told the story. Every unbelievable moment of it. He got quite a lot of odd looks when he said Cedric died, but Cedric chimed in to confirm that he remembered being hit by the killing curse. He heard it get fired, he turned to see the green light, and that was it. The next thing he remembered was the water.  
  
“What water?” Dumbledore asked.  
  
And Harry told the story of finding the cave under the grass. Of laying frozen as Pettigrew threw Cedric’s body into the pool and he came out alive. Of watching Voldemort go in the water and coming out stronger and whole.  
  
“What could that have been, Albus?” McGonagall asked quietly.  
  
“Hogwash, is what it is,” Fudge said. “There’s not such thing as magic water that can bring the dead back to life. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is not back; the children are playing a prank in very poor taste.”  
  
“I died!” Cedric shouted. “I was dead, Minister Fudge, and the only reason I’m sitting here now is because You-Know-Who wanted to test his cure before he jumped in himself. And he did jump in. He’s back. I saw him. Harry and I both saw him.”  
  
“Stop lying!” Fudge screamed.  
  
“Look at his hair!” Harry called. Most of the adults looked at him like he was talking gibberish, but Dumbledore nodded slightly and took another look at Cedric’s head. “That  white streak. It wasn’t there when we left, was it? It was the Pit. It did that to him.”  
  
“The pit?” Crystal whispered. “Is that what they called it?” She was sitting on Harry’s bed holding his hand. Harry nodded, but no one else seemed to notice she had spoken.  
  
Cedric was looking at Harry confused, reaching up to grab some his hair and try to hold it out in front of his eyes.  
  
“I have a white streak?” he asked. His eyes were going cross trying to stare up at the mark the Pit had left on him.  
  
“It’s just a coloring charm,” Fudge dismissed.  
  
“Four had a white streak, too,” Cedric said, almost to himself. Harry nodded enthusiastically, pointing to Cedric and looking eagerly for any trace that the professors and the Minister were finally starting to believe.  
  
“Who’s Four?” McGonagall asked them.  
  
“She helped us escape." Cedric let his hair go and looked more determined than ever. “She had a white streak in her hair, too. She knew about the Pit. Knew what You-Know-Who had used it for.”  
  
“And how did this,” Fudge scoffed, “Four,” he rolled his eyes, “help you escape? You see Dumbledore? Their story is changing. First they were alone in this supposed cave, now there’s a girl in there with them with pretty hair coloring.”  
  
Harry growled and continued the story.  
  
“After Pettigrew,” Fudge scoffed again, but Harry just continued louder, “put Voldemort,” Fudge winced, “into the water, someone jumped down into the cave. They were wearing all black, I could barely see them at all. But when Voldemort came out of the water, the assassin threw a knife and hit Pettigrew right in the chest. He died.”  
  
“Oh so Peter Pettigrew is finally dead now, huh?” Fudge interrupted. “After 13 years, surviving a blast that killed a dozen people and living as a rat, Peter Pettigrew was killed by an assassin in a magic cave?”  
  
“Yes,” Harry said stubbornly.   
  
“Listen I don’t know if that was really Peter Pettigrew or not,” Harry shot Cedric a betrayed look. He shrugged helplessly. “I don’t, Harry I’m sorry. But whoever it was, they really did help You-Know-Who come back. And then they were really stabbed by someone who snuck into the cave dressed all in black. And that’s when You-Know-Who stood up and shot the killer with the killing curse.”  
  
“Oh goody,” Fudge muttered to himself, “another dead witness who can’t confirm any of this wild story.”  
  
“Minister Fudge,” Dumbledore said serenely, “please let the boys finish their story. We can talk about corroborating the details once we’ve heard it in full.”  
  
The Minister of Magic grumbled but gave a large, mostly sarcastic, gesture with his hand for them to continue.  
  
“I apparated us out of the cave when You-Know-Who started coming toward us," Cedric said. "We wound up the last place I remembered, in the grass about a hundred feet away from the cave entrance. There was a muggle helicopter landed nearby. I think that’s where the the person in black came from, and there were others around there, too. So we tried to find the Cup. It was a portkey, right? It had brought us there so we thought it could bring us back.”  
  
“Very clever,” Mr. Diggory said quietly to his son. He had tears in his eye still from the part of the story where Cedric had died. Whether he thought it was true or not, it must have been painful just to hear the words after them being missing for so long.  
  
“But then the Death Eaters showed up,” Harry continued for his friend. “We saw them apparate to Voldemort, right around where the helicopter was landed. And then they all started fighting.”  
  
“Oh really now,” Fudge said. Everyone else shushed him.  
  
“We were crouched down in the grass,” Harry said loudly, “trying to find the Cup when Four found us. We thought she was going to kill us. But she said she wasn’t. She said she wanted to help us get out of there, that we were just stuck in the middle.”  
  
“She asked who you were first,” Cedric said. Harry nodded slowly. He hadn’t necessarily forgotten that detail, he just usually didn’t like to address things that mentioned his fame or anything.  
  
“You-Know-Who had shouted Harry’s name real loud,” Cedric said. “So when Four came up to us she asked if Harry was Harry. He said yes, and that’s when she said she’d help us. I thought at first she was a muggle, because she and all the other assassins didn’t cast any spells or anything, but if she knew Harry she must’ve been a witch right?”  
  
“She didn’t cast any spells?” Professor Sprout asked. “How did she get you out of the danger and back to the Cup without using any magic?”  
  
“She’s a ninja,” Cedric said seriously. Even Harry could hear how ridiculous this part of the story sounded.   
  
“We were crawling through the grass behind her,” Harry said quickly, trying to stem the objections he could see coming. “And every time a Death Eater or another assassin would find us she’d punch them or kick them or something and knock them out. It was all just muggle wrestling.”  
  
“Muggle karate,” Cedric corrected.  
  
“Muggle martial arts,” Harry conceded. For in truth nothing Four had done had looked like any of the moves Dudley practiced. It looked more like the stuff he saw in kung-fu movies Dudley watched, but even that was pushing it. It was violent and graceful, that was all he could really say.  
  
“Anyway,” Harry said, before any of the adults could laugh at how fake their story sounded now. “Four was busy taking out one of the other assassins when two Death Eaters surrounded us. I had only just seen them sneaking up, didn’t even have time to get out my wand when Two came up and knocked them out.”  
  
“Two?” McGonagall asked.  
  
“That’s what Four called him,” Cedric said. “I mean even Four didn’t exactly introduce herself as Four. That’s just what how Two talked to her. He was another assassin, but I guess since they were friends so he decided to help her help us escape. She said we needed to find the Cup, he said he saw it earlier and led us over to where it was.”  
  
“Did Two and Four die as well?” Fudge asked coarsely. “Why didn’t they come back with you if you all were such good friends? Why aren’t they here now defending your absurd story?”  
  
“We asked them to,” Cedric said helplessly. “We thought they were in the same danger we were. But they said that for better or worse they were members of the League, and they’d try their luck there rather than mess about with magic nonsense.”  
  
“Those were their exact words, actually,” Harry said. “‘Mess about with magic nonsense.’”  
  
“Members of the League?” Dumbledore asked. “What League?”  
  
“The League of Assassins,” Crystal said.

Harry blinked. He'd almost forgot his aunt was there. Usually at this time of year when he had to explain something terrifying and unbelievable to adults he and his friends were alone and unsupported. This time he had an aunt who actually loved him, and a godfather who might be tied up at the other end of the hall but was still there to help him. Neither Mr. Diggory or Crystal had scoffed as the teachers did, but Harry was still very surprised to hear his aunt speak up and help clear things up. The others were as well.  
  
All eyes were on Harry muggle aunt. She didn’t shrink away from them, but she did swallow and clear her throat before going on.  
  
“It’s an order of killers led by a man name Ra’s al Ghul.” Harry and Cedric gasped. They hadn’t mentioned that name, the one Four said didn’t like people encroaching on his territory. “They have access to something called a Lazarus Pit. There are Pits all over the world apparently, and Ra’s al Ghul considers all of them his. A Lazarus Pit can heal any wound. Can bring the dead back to life. I only know one person who’s ever used one, but afterwards she had a white streak of hair just like Cedric’s.”  
  
Cedric gently touched the patch of white hair on his head again. The room was completely silent, even Fudge didn’t have anything to say to a muggle who claimed to know about secret orders of assassins that controlled magic healing water.  
  
“How do you know all this?” Dumbledore asked finally.  
  
Crystal just shrugged casually, giving them all a nervous smile.  
  
“I’m from Gotham.”

**Author's Note:**

> While there's no shortage of Harry Potter/Batfam crossovers, I like to think this one will stand out for being, at its heart, a story about found family and recovery after trauma.
> 
> Many characters will take a while to show up.
> 
> Now please enjoy this story about a long lost relative of Harry's finally rescuing from the Dursleys, and that relative just happening to be connected to Batman.


End file.
